Transport ministers from EU countries are set to meet in Brussels on Monday, amid growing protests at border crossings with Ukraine by Polish and Slovak truckers angry at what they claim is their business being taken away by Ukrainian hauliers since the EU lifted a permitting system in the months after the war began.
On Friday, the crisis deepened when Ukrainian truckers stuck at Korczowa, one of the blockaded border crossings, announced they were starting a hunger strike.
The genesis of the dispute began in 2022 when, following Russia’s invasion and its blockade of Ukrainian exports through the Black Sea, the EU set up so-called “solidarity lanes” to enable Kyiv to redirect its exports via land routes across Europe. This included a road transport agreement signed in June 2022 – lasting initially for a year but then extended until June 2024 – which lifted a pre-existing system of permits for Ukrainian drivers entering the EU.
Polish and Slovak truckers, as well as others from across the Central and Eastern European region like Czechia, Hungary and Lithuania, claim that as a consequence of this deal, Ukrainian hauliers are undercutting them due to lower wages and standards than in the EU and are taking away their business.
Polish truckers began their protest on November 6, blocking three border crossings with Ukraine: at Dorohusk and Hrebenne in the Lubelskie region, and Korczowa in Podkarpacie. As of November 27, Polish farmers and truckers have been blocking a fourth crossing at Medyka, one of the most intensively used.
Poland and Ukraine share eight border crossings in total and Polish truckers have said they might yet expand their protest.
On Friday, Slovak truckers too started a round-the-clock blockade at the Vysne Nemecke border crossing with Ukraine.
“We ask all decision-makers involved to consider the termination of or significant changes to the current EU-Ukraine agreement without any delay and thus enable a return to the implementation of bilateral agreements of individual EU countries with Ukraine,” representatives of five major haulier associations from Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and Lithuania wrote to the European Commission in a joint letter on November 17.
The associations represent 8,000 companies and 150,000 employees across the five countries.
The Ukrainian government has hit out against the protests, claiming the blockades could end up costing Ukraine as much as 1 per cent of its GDP if allowed to continue. Among the Ukrainian drivers stuck in Poland because of the blockade and on social media, some are accusing the Polish truckers of playing into Russia’s hands or even actually being paid by Russia to carry out the blockades.
Such suspicions are heightened by the fact that one of the main leaders of the Polish truckers’ protest, Rafal Mekler, himself the owner of a transport company in the Lubelskie region, is also a prominent politician in the Confederation far-right alliance, the main political force promoting Ukrainian-sceptic messaging in the country. Confederation has also been the only party to send its politicians to the border since the protests erupted.
The protests echo similar ones organised earlier this year by Polish farmers, who likewise complained about cheaper Ukrainian produce being dumped on the Polish market following the EU’s relaxation of import restrictions. These led to the first major rupture in Polish-Ukrainian bilateral relations since the war began, as the Law and Justice (PiS) government, at the time on the campaign trail, adopted a harsher line towards Ukraine and unilaterally imposed a ban on certain Ukrainian agricultural imports.
Yet, as thousands of Ukrainian truckers remain stuck on the border in freezing temperatures, is it fair to dismiss these protests as merely driven by anti-Ukrainian political forces? Or do the claims of truckers and their farmer allies stack up?
Undercut
The “Agreement between the EU and Ukraine on the carriage of freight by road”, signed on June 27, 2022, meant Ukrainian hauliers entering Poland no longer needed to get a permit to do so.
Prior to the war, as a result of a bilateral deal between Poland and Ukraine, around 160,000 such permits were issued annually for Ukrainian drivers. Since the war began, according to both Polish and Ukrainian sources, the number of trips has risen to close to a million a year.
“Before the war, the Ukrainian side took care of about 60 per cent of transports and the Polish side 40 per cent,” Lukasz Bialas, one of the leaders of the truckers’ protest, told a press conference in the Polish parliament on November 28. “Now, we are doing 5 per cent of transports and the Ukrainians 95 per cent. We are demanding to return to the situation we had before the war.”
Polish truckers claim that the imbalance is happening because, without the permits, Ukrainian companies hold a competitive advantage because they pay their workers less and do not have to adhere to stricter EU standards.
Ironically, the situation mirrors complaints by major Western European countries almost a decade ago after Polish hauliers had gradually increased their business in the EU after the country joined the bloc, not least on account of the lower wages and standards applied in CEE countries.
However, analysts in Ukraine highlight several additional reasons why Polish hauliers are losing business since the war started.
Writing in the Kyiv Independent, business reporter Dominic Culverwell explains that, before the war, Polish companies used to employ as many as 100,000 Ukrainian drivers. Since the invasion, however, these workers have either returned voluntarily to Ukraine or cannot be sent to work there from Poland, because as conscription-aged men they would have to remain. At the same time, Polish drivers are reluctant to head towards combat areas in eastern Ukraine, leaving that part of the business to Ukrainian companies. And, lastly, Polish companies have lost business not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus and Russia.
“Polish truckers, particularly those in the south-east of the country that used to offer transport services in Ukraine, are definitely struggling,” Mateusz Fornowski, a transport analyst at the Warsaw think tank Polityka Insight, tells BIRN. “There is less demand coming from Ukraine itself because of the war and the increased market share of Ukrainian truckers, and actually less demand across Europe because of the economic situation.”
“But, of course, there is a political background to this too,” he continues. “Confederation have really positioned themselves as the party that supports transport private businesses and this is their opportunity to score points by saying: ‘PiS, PO [Civic Platform] and others are doing nothing to help, but we are’.”
Even if both sides accept that Ukrainian hauliers have taken away business from their Polish counterparts, the demand of Polish and other CEE truckers to rescind the 2022 EU-Ukraine road transport deal would be hard to meet. Like other countries in CEE, Poland signed up to the initial deal as well as its extension in June 2023.
On November 29, EU Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean adopted a harsh tone towards Poland during a press conference about the border crisis. “The entire EU and Ukraine, a country at war, cannot be held hostage through the blocking of the EU’s external border,” the Commissioner said, complaining that there was almost “a complete lack of response from the Polish authorities”.
The border crisis has caught Poland between governments, with the outgoing PiS government unwilling to take on such a major, complex issue, and the incoming pro-EU alliance of opposition parties not yet formally in place and settling for now with blaming PiS for the situation.
A major breakthrough anytime soon is unlikely. “I am sceptical that agreement satisfactory to both sides can be achieved, especially in the near future,” Fornowski says. “We do have the Council [of the EU meeting of transport ministers] today, but the EU seems uninterested in nullifying or renegotiating the 2022 agreement with Ukraine.”
He adds that the tense atmosphere in Brussels and the two capitals is not helping either. “You can see that even in the tone of the Commission, which expresses its support for Ukraine – and everyone in this conflict does support Ukraine – but seems less keen to look closely at the issues raised by Polish drivers. I think a few very long weeks await us,” he says.
Nevertheless, over the weekend there were signs of compromise in the one area that experts like Fornowski had said progress could be made. On Sunday, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister for the restoration of Ukraine, announced that a border crossing at Uhryniv-Dolhobychuv would be used to enable returning Polish trucks to leave Ukraine faster. That had been a key demand of Polish truckers, who complained of being forced to spend between one and three weeks waiting in Ukraine before being able to leave after delivering their freight.
Food for thought
A growing nervousness about the crisis in both Brussels and Kyiv also stems from a sense of deja vu, as it was only in spring when Polish farmers attempted to block a rail border crossing with Ukraine, via which Ukrainian food products were coming into Poland. This kicked off of a wave of protests that ended up impacting national and European politics.
The farmers’ protest became a major election issue in Poland, leading PiS politicians, many of whom are dependent on the rural vote, to express for the first time reservations about supporting Ukraine militarily.
The Polish farmers’ action gradually expanded to other countries in the region too, leading the European Commission to impose a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain and other produce.
Just as now with the truckers, concerns were raised as to how much the Polish farmers’ concerns represented real problems and how much was the result of anti-Ukrainian political forces and pro-Russian propaganda channels.
An answer came last month from Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (NIK), the institution mandated with checking the functioning of public institutions. While Marian Banas, the head of NIK, has been a notorious enemy of PiS, NIK’s analyses over the years tend to be considered credible by the Polish media and general public.
In its report published on November 23, NIK appeared to bear out the concerns of Polish farmers. In the period it analysed, between January 2022 and August 2023, imports of wheat from Ukraine to Poland increased by 17,000 per cent and of corn by 30,000 per cent.
The report also corroborated accusations by farmers that some of the cereals imported into Poland, particularly grain and rapeseed, were used for purposes other than those declared (e.g., used for human consumption even though destined for industrial purposes).
“The actions of the Polish Ministry of Agriculture, meant to deal with the increased imports caused by war, were late, not based on proper analyses and especially ineffective in protecting the domestic market,” concluded the NIK report.
“The government did not develop systematic solutions to ensure the stability of the agricultural market, including the functioning of the Polish producers, and policy in this area has been based on ad hoc measures,” it said.
With the Polish authorities again seemingly averse to taking appropriate action, it would come as no surprise to many if a similar conclusion is reached about the road transport sector.
